


And Love Is Not A Choice

by Lilsciencequeen



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Jemma, Asexuality, Drabble Collection, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Pride, prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-18 06:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14847311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsciencequeen/pseuds/Lilsciencequeen
Summary: A collection of AOS Pride Fics for Pride Month.





	1. Platonic FitzSimmons/Romantic Daisy & Jemma

**Author's Note:**

> So I am going to do a collection of fics for pride month with a variety of pairings and characters. This first one features some homophobia and being kicked out so if you want to skip this one, feel free to skip it.

“Jemma?” his mum asked, looking at the young woman that was standing in the doorway, soaked through with rain, a bag slung over her shoulder, her eyes red and puffy and Violet could tell that it wasn’t from the rain.

“Fitz, yeah he’s here dear. Would you like to come in?”

Jemma nodded, stepping into the hallway and dropping her bag to the ground and sliding her coat and shoes off. Her hoodie was damp, and her jeans looked more water than fabric at this point and her heart broke from the image of the girl. She had an idea of why the girl was here, but she didn’t want to press the issue, not until Jemma was ready to speak up.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice a gentle low murmur, her gaze dipped, not wanting to look up.

“It’s okay,” Violet reassured, squeezing her shoulder as Jemma shuffled into the house, closing the door before she followed her.

“Mum?” came Fitz’s voice from up the stairs, her son already heading down them to see what was happening. Then he froze, stopping mid step as he saw Jemma standing there, dripping onto the wet floor. “Jemma! Are you… are you okay?”

She shook her head, and before he could hurry down the rest of them, his mum pushed past him and went up the stairs, giving him a reassuring squeeze on his own shoulder. “I’ll be up here for when you need me, okay?”  She knew that it was for the best, that this was a matter for the two of them to discuss, and when she was needed, she could come back down. She wasn’t going to cause Jemma to feel any more uncomfortable than she already was.

He nodded, and then he was left alone with Jemma. He remained there frozen for a moment before he was able to jolt back to reality and take in what was happening. “Do you want a towel? Some clothes?”

She nodded, still not speaking, as if words were too hard for her at this point. “I’ll be back,” he told her, filling the silence. He turned back up the stairs, hurrying as he did so, and grabbed a towel from the upstairs bathroom, and then a sweatshirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms from his own room, before heading back down the stairs to where Jemma was waiting. She hadn’t moved from her spot, didn’t move until he passed her the clothes and towel, murmuring a small thanks as she did so, before walking down the hall, turning left into the downstairs bathroom, locking the door with a click behind her.

He waited for a moment before heading into the kitchen, grabbing two mugs. He had only a vague idea of why Jemma was here, why she had come to them at this late hour, and he hated that he had his suspicions, hated that what Jemma had feared the most had come true. He wondered if his mum knew too, but then again, it had been her who had put the offer out, should it ever happen, her who had suggested what now seemed to be happening.

It didn’t take him long to make the hot chocolates and bring them to the lounge, and he had just set them down on the coffee table when Jemma appeared in the doorway, still towel drying her hair but she was now in clothes that were dry, albeit slightly too large for her.

“I made you… I made you hot chocolate,” he stuttered, watching as her eyes widened. She took a tentative step forward, before padding the rest of the way into the living room and dropping into one of the seats on the sofa and reaching for one of the mugs and taking a sip, the whipped cream giving her a mini moustached. She wiped at it with the back of her hand. “Thank you,” she told him, finally meeting his eyes.

Her own were red and puffy, swollen as though she had spent hours crying. Neither of them spoke, neither of them wanting to be the first to raise the issue. It was when Jemma was half way through her drink that she finally spoke. He meanwhile hadn’t even touched his, he was too on edge, his stomach churning. “They found out about Daisy.”

“Your parents?” he asked, knowing who she was even talking without even needing to ask the question.

She nodded. “They went into my phone, went through all my messages…

“Jemma…” he breathed, shocked that they could do something like that. They weren’t the nicest people that he had ever met, they had said some horrible stuff to Jemma before, had done some horrible stuff. But this here, it was something that he had never expected that they would do. He knew that Jemma kept her relationship with Daisy a secret from her parents, that it was something that she didn’t want them knowing, not until she was ready to tell them, but for them to find out like this, by violating her privacy…

It was disgusting.

“What did they say?” he ventured, not wanting to push the issue, not wanting to upset her anymore than she already was.

She snorted. “They told me to get out. What else would they have said?”

“Does Daisy know?”

Daisy. Her girlfriend. They had met last year when Jemma had been studying in America, the two of them not meaning to fall for each other, but not exactly caring when they found out that the other had feelings, and so a relationship had blossomed between the two of them, and it was so hard sometimes for him to see Jemma being away from the person that she loved, with a family who she knew would never accept her for who she was. He just wanted her to be happy, and she wasn’t happy. Not at home, not with her family, not truly.

“Not yet,” she replied, her words knocking him out of his thoughts. “I just… I don’t know what to do, what to say, where to stay.”

“You know you’re welcome here,” he told her, placing a reassuring hand on her knee, her eyes dropping down to look at it. “You’re always welcome here, I wouldn’t have told you otherwise, and you wouldn’t have come here otherwise.” And it was true. He was the first person she had ever come out to, just over two years ago now, and they both knew how unaccepting her parents were. His mum had been there, she had felt comfortable telling his own mum before her own parents. She had told them over dinner one night whilst watching T.V., and then she had said she didn’t know what she would do if her parents ever found out. His mum had just smiled at her, placed a hand on her shoulder and told her that she would always have a place here, a home here, no matter what.

“I don’t have anything,” she whispered, her voice dropping. “I don’t know what…” Her voice cracked as the realisation of all that had happened hit her, and her shoulders dropped, her face crumbling as the tears once again began to fall. “I don’t know.”

He reached around, taking the mug from her hands before it could fall then pulled her into a hug, wrapping her in his arms. She sank into his embrace, sobbing softly into his shirt as he rubbed her back and murmured soft reassurances, reassurances that it was going to be okay, that it was all going to be okay despite it not looking okay. That she had a home here, always. No matter what.

“We’ll work something out,” he told her after a while, her sobs gentler than they had previously been.

“You promise?” she whispered, not even lifting her head from its position against his chest.

He nodded. “I promise.”


	2. Asexual Jemma/Platonic FitzSimmons

She frowned as she listened to the voices around her, discussing Claire and her friends from the lab discuss Claire’s date last night and how her and Markus had slept together. It was a dull boring conversation, one that held little interest for her, and the words just flitted over her head and she paid no attention to them as the conversation progressed.

“So he was good?” Sam asked, raising her eyebrow and giving Claire a bump with her shoulder.

“He was good, could have been better, but it was the first time,” she told them, reaching for her class and taking a sip. “But that doesn’t matter, Jemma had a date last night too, didn’t you?”

It took her a second to release that Claire was talking to her, that she had been pushed into the forefront of the conversation. It was true, she did have a date last night. It had been her and Brad’s three-month anniversary, and it hadn’t ended well. “Well,” she said, trying to figure out what to say. She didn’t want to tell them that they had broken up. It would only give them more fuel for the jokes that they had. She wasn’t even friends with them. They were in the lab with her, and most lunchtimes they sat with her, joining her at her table and dragging her into conversations that she didn’t want to be dragged in. The days she didn’t share lunch with Fitz with of course, on those days, they left the building, heading to the café just down the road for their lunch.

“He dumped you, didn’t he?” Leah asked, butting in. And Jemma wanted to ask how she knew, demand why they knew stuff about her personal life. Yes, her and Brad hadn’t ended on the best of terms. It had been an explosive ending, shouting and screaming and tears but she hadn’t expected news to spread this quickly. She expected Brad to still be in bed hungover in all honesty. “He did!” she cried out, pointing at Jemma when she didn’t answer. “Jesus Jemma, you really can’t hold down a relationship, can you? What was the reason this time? Not wanting sex again?”

All eyes turned on her and she felt a blush burn across her cheeks, ands she had to stand. She wasn’t ready for a conversation like this, to discuss her sex life, or lack thereof, in front of everyone who didn’t even like her, so she pushed her tray away and grabbed her bag, hurrying out of the canteen before anyone could stop her, or see her tears.

***

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” she whispered to him from her position curled up on the bed, her face red and blotchy with tears. She had come straight back to their apartment after the disaster that had been lunch and their words had stuck with her, boring into her soul. She couldn’t face going back to the lab, she just couldn’t, so she took the afternoon off, there was no pressing work she had to do, she was on top of it all, so no one minded, saying it was a good thing she took it off, she was working more than she had to anyway. She needed the rest.

“Why?” he asked, his hand resting on her leg. He had come home to find her like this, her body shaking softly with the sobs. “Why would there be something wrong with you? Was it Leah and all again?”

She shifted in the bed, sitting up so that she can look at him. “Fitz, I can’t… they know about Brad, about why he broke up with me.”

“You don’t have to owe him sex, you know that Jemma. You don’t owe anyone sex, no matter who they are.”

“But how many relationships have I been in that ended because I just don’t want to have sex? This can’t be… the idea of it, it’s not something I want to do and no one…  no one understands that!”

“You’ll find someone,” he told her, pulling her in closer, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as he allowed her to let out her emotions. “You’ll find someone who understands one day, okay? And its not the end of the world if you don’t like sex, you’re not the only one out there. I just know it okay, and don’t you ever think that there’s anything wrong with you, please. Okay?”

“Fitz…”

“Jemma, sex, having it, it isn’t something that everyone enjoys, that everyone wants, and if nobody understands that, if no one _respects_ that, then they don’t deserve you. You deserve someone who loves you for who you are, what you want, what you don’t want. No matter what that may be.”

His words, as much as she knew that they were true, they weren’t sinking in. Not yet anyway. She had never known anyone who felt like this, who had a disinterest like herself when it came to sex, and it sucked, especially now, when society was so obsessed with the act, at least in her opinion, but deep down, at the heart of it all, she knew that Fitz was right. So she nodded, at least to please him, at least to make him smile and hug her close. The rest, the rest she could work out later.

***

A couple of days had passed, and she was still feeling somewhat upset after she had been confronted by the others, after she had had her conversation with Fitz about how it was okay to have no desire to have sex, and how she didn’t owe anyone sex, no matter who they were.

It had been a couple of days and now she was feeling somewhat better, as if only slightly. She had stopped having lunch in the canteen, her and Fitz working out an arrangement so they could have lunch together on the days their schedules didn’t always line up, and it made lunch so much more enjoyable.

And their evenings where spent how they usually spent them, having dinner and watching T.V. together, the two of them ordering in Indian when it came to Saturday night, a B-rated horror film ready to stream when Jemma set down her dinner on the coffee table and took a breath before turning to face Fitz. “I did some research, about what I was worried about the other day. About not being interested in sex.” He didn’t reply, unsure of what to say, but he allowed her to continue. “There’s a sexuality, a name for a feeling that like, a name for having no sexual attraction. Asexuality. Of course, there’s a spectrum for it; there’s other sexualities such as demisexual, where a sexual attraction can be felt but after an emotional bond has been formed, or gray-asexual, which is… it’s someone who identifies as somewhere between asexuality and sexuality. They might experience attraction, but only very rarely or under certain conditions and there’s a whole range of attractions, ways that someone might be attracted to someone. Romantically, sexually…” she paused to take a breath and then she found she had lost the courage that she had, that she couldn’t continue what she was saying.

“Jemma?” Fitz asked, watching her, his face softening.

“What I’m trying to say is that I think that I’m… I’m asexual. So I guess this is me… coming out.”

He smiled at her, and set down his own dinner and took his hands in her own. “You’re… you’ve looked this up, researched this?”

She nodded. “When you said that there were others out there, that you knew that I wasn’t alone, I had to see… I had to see it for myself, I had to know.”

Fitz couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at this, and Jemma knew that he meant no harm by time. “Of course. Jemma Simmons doesn’t pass up as an opportunity for research.”

“So you don’t… you don’t think differently of me? You don’t think that there’s…”

“No Jemma, no.” He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds before opening them again and meeting her gaze, one he poured all his emotion into, hoping to get his message across. “Jemma, there’s nothing that’s ever going to stop me from loving you, you’re my best friend, you know that? And no matter who you are, what you do, I’m gonna stand by you and support you, no matter what, because I know that you would do that same for me, but more importantly, it’s what friends do.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, knowing that he did mean it, but wanting to hear him say it again, wanting to hear his words of acceptance.

“I am. Nothing would ever change my opinion of you, I could never hate you, thing badly of you. Nothing will change my opinion of you… well, one thing might make me ask for less lab time with you.”

She froze, panic surging through her, her heart pounding in her chest. “What?”

“How many cat livers you leave beside my lunch.”

She rolled her eyes, relaxing instantly because of course Fitz would make a joke like that, he would defuse all the attention in the room with one simple joke, something to take her mind of all her worries.

“Ugh Fitz.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know that there is a wide spectrum when it comes to sexuality and how one person fits into a category if it can be called that is not how everyone fits in, and that's okay, so people may have different experiences and feelings than what their best friend may have. Asexual Jemma is something that has been on my mind for a while and I just wanted to write her, and some thoughts and opinions laced within this are similar to my own, as someone who classes herself as ace.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for checking out, feel free to leave any prompts that you want in the comments.


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